US int’l trade of­fi­cial con­cludes visit to Kuwait

KUWAIT: Act­ing Un­der­sec­re­tary of Com­merce for In­ter­na­tional Trade, Ken Hy­att, led a del­e­ga­tion of 15 US com­pa­nies on a safety and se­cu­rity in­dus­try trade mis­sion to Kuwait, Novem­ber 13-14. The mis­sion in­tro­duced US firms to Kuwait’s se­cu­rity mar­ket, con­nected US com­pa­nies with po­ten­tial lo­cal agents, and al­lowed par­tic­i­pat­ing firms to in­ter­act with of­fi­cials from var­i­ous Kuwaiti min­istries in­volved in this sec­tor.

“There is a long his­tory of com­mer­cial ties be­tween the United States and Kuwait, as well as a strong part­ner­ship in many ar­eas in­clud­ing de­fense co­op­er­a­tion,” Hy­att said. “Com­pa­nies rep­re­sented on this del­e­ga­tion of­fer state-of-the-art tech­nol­ogy in the safety and se­cu­rity sec­tor and are well-po­si­tioned to en­ter the Kuwaiti mar­ket.”

US Am­bas­sador to Kuwait Lawrence Sil­ver­man par­tic­i­pated in sev­eral of the trade mis­sion meet­ings. “This trade mis­sion was a great op­por­tu­nity to in­tro­duce US safety and se­cu­rity firms to key de­ci­sion-mak­ers at dif­fer­ent min­istries that we be­lieve can ben­e­fit from US tech­nol­ogy and ser­vices. The del­e­gates were very pleased with the con­nec­tions they made as they look to en­ter and ex­pand their busi­ness in Kuwait.”

The del­e­ga­tion met with the Min­istries of In­te­rior and De­fense, the Kuwait Na­tional Guard, and the Kuwait Petroleum Cor­po­ra­tion dur­ing the trade mis­sion, and learned about up­com­ing pro­cure­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, the process to bid on ten­ders, and es­tab­lished con­tacts within these govern­ment en­ti­ties. They also had cus­tom­ized in­di­vid­ual meet­ings with po­ten­tial agents. A net­work­ing re­cep­tion al­lowed for ad­di­tional in­ter­ac­tion with prospec­tive part­ners. As the de­fense and se­cu­rity mar­kets con­tinue to grow glob­ally, Kuwait is a mar­ket of op­por­tu­nity as it im­ple­ments a coun­try-wide plan to sig­nif­i­cantly in­crease in­vest­ment in safety and se­cu­rity equip­ment through 2020.

The trade mis­sion del­e­ga­tion in­cluded a di­verse group of small- and medi­um­sized en­ter­prises (SMEs) and large cor­po­ra­tions. In­cluded in the group were: Ameris­tar Perime­ter Se­cu­rity. Ap­plied Con­cepts Inc, Comm-Port Tech­nolo­gies Inc, DFNDR Ar­mor, Dig­i­tal Globe, ENODO Global Inc, High Im­pact Tech­nol­ogy, Kratos De­fense and Se­cu­rity So­lu­tions, Mod­u­lar Sys­tems Di­vi­sion, Maxxess Sys­tems Inc, Navajo Fab­rics, Sure­fire, Tracer Tech­nol­ogy Sys­tems Inc, Texas A&M En­gi­neer­ing Ex­ten­sion Ser­vice (TEEX) and Zanstra Sat. For more in­for­ma­tion about the trade mis­sion and if you would like to get in touch with any of these com­pa­nies please con­tact the US Em­bassy’s Com­mer­cial sec­tion at of­fice.kuwait­c­ity@trade.gov.

Mem­bers of the US safety and se­cu­rity trade mis­sion del­e­ga­tion.